Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a planned training exercise of the country’s strategic nuclear forces via video link, the Kremlin announced on Wednesday.
According to the official statement, the drill involved multiple branches of Russia’s nuclear triad. From the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russian forces launched a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) toward the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula – a distance of over 5,700 kilometers (3,500 miles), as per Russian media.
Simultaneously, a Sineva submarine-launched ballistic missile was fired from the Bryansk, a nuclear-powered submarine operating in the Barents Sea, while Tu-95MS strategic bombers conducted air-based launches of long-range cruise missiles.
“The exercise tested the readiness of military command authorities and the practical skills of operational personnel in managing subordinate forces. All assigned tasks were completed successfully,” the Kremlin’s press service said in its statement.
The training, described as routine, comes amid heightened global tensions surrounding Russia’s nuclear rhetoric during its ongoing war against Ukraine.
The Kremlin has conducted similar strategic command-and-control drills in 2023 and 2024, typically aimed at demonstrating the reliability of Russia’s nuclear deterrent and its ability to respond to what Moscow calls “strategic threats.”
While the Kremlin emphasized that the drill was pre-planned and defensive in nature, Western analysts often view such exercises as strategic signaling, designed to project strength and remind adversaries of Russia’s extensive nuclear capabilities.
Last month Kyiv Post reported that most troops deploying for the exercise called Zapad-2025 would simulate attacking with and defending against nuclear weapons in military training areas in central or northwestern Belarus, or in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Russia announced it was deploying nuclear weapons to Belarus in June 2023, at the time claiming it was a necessary response to western deliveries of long-range conventional weapons to Ukraine.